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Newsweek story on Zika vaccine to zap brain cancer is fascinating–but needed more caution about mouse research

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Our Review Summary

This story reports results from a study in which researchers deployed a Zika virus vaccine to target and kill human glioblastoma brain cancer stem cells, which had been transplanted into mice. Glioblastoma is the most common and malignant form of primary brain tumor, and has most recently been in the news as the disease that killed Senator John McCain. It is incurable despite aggressive treatment with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. Median survival time is less than 2 years.

The story does express some limitations of the study findings, which we appreciate. But given how preliminary this evidence was, we think there was room for improvement–especially in the headline (no mention of mice) and when countering some speculation about how the virus might “hunt” down cancer in people.

Why This Matters

Any new ideas about cancer treatment are exciting. The idea of using the “bad side” of viruses for good purposes is intriguing. However, as the story states, it’s not yet known if this virus is safe for use in humans, and finding that out is likely to take several more years of research. The story has relevance because the nation has recently been in mourning after the death of Senator McCain. It’s also interesting because the threat of Zika infection has been a real concern in certain parts of the U.S., so its potential use as a treatment of brain cancer feels like a fascinating paradox.

Criteria

Not Applicable

This is a report of the results of a clinical trial in mice. It’s too early to estimate costs for human treatment. However, some discussion of the steep, sometimes bankrupting, costs of cancer treatment is always a good idea.

Satisfactory

We learn from this story that mice with the attenuated Zika virus lived 50 days, in comparison to mice in the control group that lived 30 days. We aren’t given specific numbers on how much tumor development was delayed. We’ll award a satisfactory grade since the story did at least quantify the overall survival difference between the two groups (something rarely reported on in coverage of rodent studies). However, given that this was a study in mice, we were looking for strong cautions that we simply have no evidence if this will work in humans, which is true of all animal studies on potential human treatments. That’s a deficit we’ll address below under the Evidence criterion.

Not Satisfactory

The story reports that the Zika virus had no adverse health effects in mice, but that it is possible it might destroy healthy neural tissue in humans. Again, the story needed to caution that we have no idea how this might help–or hurt–humans.

Not Satisfactory

Given the uncertainty around animal studies ever leading to an effective treatment, we question the appropriateness of running a story in a major newsweekly in the first place. But if journalists decide that this type of research is worthy of coverage, we think they should do more to clarify in some detail how far away we are from a potential treatment for humans. That point was mentioned in the story but didn’t come across strongly enough here, especially since one of the researchers speculated that “Before undergoing surgery, cancer patients could be given the Zika vaccine to “let the viruses hunt down the GSCs [glioblastoma stem cells] and eliminate them.” It would have been a good idea to point out we don’t know if this “hunting” will work similarly in people. Most importantly, based on this type of evidence, we are far from knowing if this will increase the quality of life and overall survival time for people with brain cancer.

Not Satisfactory

We do not learn from this story that multiple versions of oncolytic viruses have been explored for virotherapy against human Glioblastoma, with promising results. Thus, although the use of Zika virus may be new, research into using viruses to treat this cancer is well under way.

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